the WMFB-funded restoration programme at St George’s alongside other exhibits which include Sir John Soane’s drawings of Stowe House and the gems and Renaissance manuscripts he purchased from the Marquess of Buckingham, as well as drawings by Robert Adam and Nicholas Hawksmoor. This exhibition represents a wonderful chance to see some of the jewels of the Soane collection.

he first room of this big, thirteen room show takes two works, Summertime (1948) by Jackson Pollock and A Bigger Splash (1967) by David Hockney, from

which the exhibition takes its title, as the entry point for investigating the relationship between performance art and painting from 1950 to the present day. Pollock’s energetic physicality in the act of creating his drip paintings is contrasted with Hockney’s meticulous and painstaking approach in his Californian pool paintings in films of both artists at work which are shown alongside their two iconic works of art. The exhibition moves on to looking at experimental works where the body is used as a painting tool as in Yves Klein’s use of models smeared with paint pressing themselves against the canvas, his so-called “living brushes”, and to other works where the body becomes the canvas itself as in Cindy Sherman’s use of make up to create disturbing self-portraits. The final rooms of the show are given over to displaying some recent large-scale installations

by

Barbican Art Gallery Everything Was Moving: Photography from the 60s and 70s

Until 13th January

British Library Euston Road NW1 Mughal India:

Art, Culture and Empire Until 2nd April

The Curve Barbican Centre EC2 Rain Room

Random International Until 3rd March

The Courtauld Gallery Strand WC2 Peter Lely: A Lyrical Vision Until 13th January

individual

contemporary artists. Some of these installations are more successful than others in showing the influence of action and performance but the best of them, such as Karen Kilimnik’s Swan Lak

e of 1992 and Lucy McKenzie’s May of T eck of 1977,

seem to be about creating spaces that are waiting for performances to begin. It all makes for a sprawling but interesting exhibition.